Gratitude - in Percentages

Sunday, October 10th, 2004
19th after Pentecost (Communion Sunday)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Luke 17:11-19

11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ 14When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean. 15Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ 19Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’

“We have no way to thank you.”
“How can we ever thank you?”
“God will repay you.”
“Thank you so much, thank you so much, thank you so much.”

I suspect that if we went around the room, at one time or another, we’ve all … hopefully … been on the receiving end of one of those expressions of gratitude.

‘Was none of them found to return and give praise to God
except this foreigner?’

It almost sounds … racist, doesn’t it? At the least, it sounds … isolationist … Jesus, the savior of the world, the lamb of God, the author and redeemer of our faith, the one who came so that all the world would be saved, is now here, referring to the single one of the 10 lepers he’d just healed coming back to thank him, and seems to be able to think of nothing better to call him by than to highlight the fact that he is a Samaritan. It’s something you’d expect to hear from someone like …well, Peter, or Paul, before his conversion … or definitely the Pharisees … we could even read a little bit of exasperation in Jesus’ tone as he says it.

‘… none of them found … except this foreigner?’

In defense of the other nine, he had just told them to go and show themselves to the Priests. No mention of ‘go and be healed’, or ‘your sins have been forgiven’, or ‘your faith has made you whole’ – at least at the beginning of the passage. His response to their undefined request for mercy was a simple command: ‘Go and show yourselves to the Priests.’ So they did.

There was an understood subtext to what Jesus did. HE knew and THEY knew that, to meet the requirements of being declared ‘clean’, they needed to be examined by a priest, who would then declare them healthy.

I wonder if any of them asked themselves why Jesus told them to go see the priest when it was obvious to everyone that they were LEPERS. And as far as anyone knew, there was no cure.

Doesn’t it strike you as odd? I suppose it might not so much, since most all of us know the rest of the story. But the thought is, why do something that would only apply in a situation in which you’ll never find yourself again?

They were healed as they were walking.

There's an image for you. How often do we go along, walking on this pilgrimage of faith, only to one day look back and realilze that we've been healed -- sometimes of something we didn't even know we suffered from?

Imagine walking along a dusty Palestinian road, surrounded by your fellow lepers, maybe you’re in the middle of the group, and you’re looking down at the back of the legs of the man in front of you. You’ve grown accustomed to watching the step-shuffle, step-shuffle gait of him over the years you’ve been hanging out together. And as you’re walking along, you suddenly realize that the step-shuffle is changing … and before you know it … the gait is ‘step-step, step-step, and step-step’. It hits you – you take a closer look, and – yeah, I’ll be darned. Those toes are back on that foot!

Then you stop breathing. You look down at your own feet, your legs, your hands. And where there used to be gnarled stumps, there are now whole feet and hands – fingers just like they used to be – all there. You put your hand to your face and feel it – and realize you CAN ACTUALLY FEEL IT. Something you hadn’t been able to do for years – longer than you’ve been an outcast – the first symptom – losing the sensation in your extremities – predated by several years your ending up as a part of the ragtag group of outcasts who had to warn everyone as they drew near that they were

‘UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!’

In New Testament times, those who suffered from leprosy were forced to proclaim their illness – literally – by yelling to anyone whom they saw coming that they were ‘unclean’ – to warn them off – or else risk becoming infected themselves. Thus they not only suffered the effects of the disease itself, but of the ostracism – the devastating effects of being cast out of their homes and families because of fear. Fear of contagion. Fear of infection, fear of guilt by association.

How often do we find ourselves separating ourselves from those we would consider foreigners in our midst? How easily – how much more readily do we identify what separates us rather than what unites us, what we have in common?

It struck me in this reading that the only one to come back was a Samaritan. Samaritans wouldn’t have been … eligible for a priestly blessing from a Jewish priest anyway, since by definition, they were unclean, leprous or not. Perhaps this man had less of an investment in completing the task that Jesus had given him. Perhaps he realized sooner than the others where the real source of his healing came from. It wasn’t going to be found in the priestly blessing. He knew that the change that had occurred in his life was from above, and nothing anyone could do here on earth would change that. Recognized or not, he knew himself to be clean.

Time and time again, we see Jesus reaching out to the fringe of society. To the outcasts, to the folks living on that ragged edge of humanity, who had been denied their identity as fully human by the norms of the society in which they lived. Christ takes that and turned it on its head (nothing new there). I suspect Jesus probably had an idea that exactly this WOULD happen – that as the lepers were walking towards the priests, as they became whole, they would become so enthralled with what they were regaining, what they were once again becoming able to participate in, that their focus shifted. They began to think more and more about what they could get out of the healing - their own personal gain - than what they could learn from the healing, what wisdom they could draw from their experience of being ostracized, of being shut out of their world only to suddenly and unexpectedly have it fall within their reach again.

Is that what we find here?

In a society that has taken the radical nature of Christianity and, to one degree or another, neutered it, made it in some ways a shadow of what it can be – a cataclysmically counter culturally transformative force in the lives of individuals and communities – and nations.

There are times when I think the worst thing that could have happened to the Christian faith was that it became acceptable to be one. That’s the contradiction, isn’t it? Such a powerful force, that it swept through the ancient world, and eventually took over the seats of power – and became infected by the very thing it was set against – that same power it acquired through acceptability. Becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Do we find ourselves here today celebrating communion as a statement of position, a heralding to the world that ‘here we are, we BELONG!’ with the implied counterpoint being ‘and you don’t’ or as a confession of our unworthiness in the face of such a sacrifice, and an expression of thanksgiving to God, who through Jesus reconciled the world to himself?

The beauty – and grace - is always in the invitation.

Christ invites us all to the table, Samaritan. Jew, or Gentile. It makes no difference to him. Male or Female, slave or free. We are all welcomed at this table. Because this table, this meal is the epitome of a welcoming feast.

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

(1 Cor 11:23-26)

As Christ’s followers, we proclaim Christ’s death until he comes, through the sharing of the bread and the drinking of the wine. We do it out of obedience, out of the hope that we have in the promise that he WILL one day return. And so we come, regularly, earnestly, prayerfully, and worshipfully.

(Communion)

Let’s pray.